Echoes
by ephemereal
Summary: “A bouquet,” says Angel. “For my king. Brighten up the world.” A fight to end all fights leads to a first Thanksgiving apart for the gang. Oneshot.


**Author's Note: **This is a Thanksgiving fic set during the show. Characters are not mine. But ya knew that.

**_A huge apology to anyone who happened to try and read this fic without scene breaks. Stupid site ate them._**

**Echoes**

This was not just another fight. Echoes of shouts and tears ricochet off the walls in sympathy for this latest conflict, though the actual sounds have fled days ago.

Mark sits on the old olive-green sofa tooling around with his camera for lack of anything more festive to do. He's always wished for a little more privacy, always been a solitary person. Not now though. Now the emptiness is overpowering, the silence a constant reminder the others' absence.

Sighing, Mark presses a couple of buttons and plays back through a random clip just to hear something else make noise.

Angel, beating her drumsticks on the aluminum kitchen table and grinning from ear to ear.

* * *

An early winter ice storm. Pavements turned gray and deadly by something as innocuous as water.

Collins slinks into the back door of a McDonald's, aware that his pockets are filled with nothing but pills. Silently, he sits at a yellow plastic table adjoining the glass to the childrens' play area. He pulls his hands from his pockets and blows on them, trying to shake the cold that seems to have taken up permanent residence beneath his skin.

Over the top of the food counter, one of the cashiers gives him a dirty look. She seems vaguely familiar, and for a moment Collins entertains the notion that he has taught her. But faces have a way of blurring together through years of complaints and slurs. He shakes himself.

Across the glass, several children are playing, turned to silhouettes by the harsh gray-day light coming through the large windows behind them. As he watches, one little girl comes up to the glass and stares at him. Completely bald.

Swallowing, Collins wonders what demons she battles in her dreams each night.

* * *

Three states west and south, it is still not warm. Here there is dirty rain instead of snow and ice, gray and brown instead of white. No blue. No green. No lights.

Sitting in his broken-down car, Roger has absolutely no inclination to get help. It is semi-peaceful here, with the sound of the rain on the leaky windows drowning the memories of tears and shouting in a murky grave.

Absently, he twists his body around the seat and for a moment is struck by the solidness of it against his chest. He has felt empty for so long now, even an inanimate object is somehow comforting. Sighing, he shakes his head in shame at his own foolishness and finishes his original intention, pulling his guitar case into his lap.

His real comfort object. He pulls the red Fender out of its cracked leather case and runs calloused fingers over the strings, listening to them whisper their condolences in harmony with the rain.

* * *

Time is ticked off by the ringing of a Salvation Army bell in the hand of a phony red Santa standing in front of the Food Emporium.

"Help the homeless!" he cries, "Give to those in need!" Over and over again. Yet he has nothing but glares for the man in rags he has ousted from under the awning.

Mimi sits on a park bench across the street, silently seething, but too tired to do anything about it. If Angel were here, the two of them would show the asshole just exactly how to help the homeless. But she isn't, and neither is anyone else, and that's the whole trouble.

Listening to the sounds of a fight from somewhere behind her, Mimi digs a nail into a dark bruise on her honey-colored arm, watching the little half-moon pale, then re-darken with blood.

* * *

"Your place or mine?" asks Maureen, winking obnoxiously. Joanne gives her a look, sighs.

"Is it always about sex with you?" She slams on her breaks as the car in front of them swerves, cursing in a way that inevitably makes Maureen giggle. Joanne pulls over into the breakdown lane at the first point possible and turns on her.

"You think that was funny? We could've been killed!"

"Chill, Pookie," says Maureen, unaware that her endearment term has just made things worse. "I just don't get to hear you curse like a sailor every day. It's very refreshing."

"Maureen…" Joanne shakes her head. "Can't you ever take anything seriously?"

* * *

Mesmerized, Mark loses track of time and space. He is numb everywhere but inside, unaware of anything but a burning ache deep, deep down. Outside, the rain turns to snow, but he doesn't notice. On the little camera screen Angel dances on and on, smiling still. A sight he hasn't seen in so long now, he hasn't realized it's what he's missing.

At last the clip clicks to the end, and Mark's fingers fly feverishly over the buttons, drumming impatiently until he's found another one.

This one too is over too fast, and he searches again. Over and over again, until there is nothing left that he has not seen.

Now that the tape is exhausted, the reality of it all at last breaks through Mark's shields, and he leans back against the couch, all too aware of the way his sobs echo against the walls of the empty loft.

Angel is gone, and Roger is too. Suddenly he is afraid not even magic can bring them all back together.

* * *

Roger sits with his back against the door and shakes his hands to keep his icy fingers from cramping. The rain has gotten harder, and darkness has started to fall. A few yards away, the highway has become vacant.

For the first time all day, Roger realizes that he is stranded here. Stranded by his temper, by his lies, by his own bad choices. Stuck in freezing rain in a broken down car without a friendly face in sight. Not even a phone.

He shakes his head, and his reflection stares condemningly back from the rearview mirror. Eyes burning. Piercing. Breathing raggedly, he slams the back of his head against the inside of the car door over and over again, biting the back of his knuckles to stifle his own cries.

* * *

"Sir, you're going to have to leave." The cashier has taken advantage of her break to come over and give Collins the hook. He looks up at her sympathetically and resists the urge to shake his head. Since Angel, he has only felt sorry for the rest of the world. Maureen would call him bitter, but she is not here now, and he does not think she is right.

"Sir? This place is for customers only. Now if you aren't planning on buying anything, you're going to have to leave."

"Happy Thanksgiving," says Collins, and gets to his feet.

The cashier looks practically floored by his sincerity.

* * *

Giving in to temptation at last, Mimi peels a few very crumpled bills from inside the lip of one black boot. She watches The Man a few feet off as he calls to a skinny blonde kid. Mimi has seen this girl before, and she can't help but feel a little bit guilty at sitting silently watching.

"Help the homeless!" cries the Salvation Army Santa.

Mimi looks down at the bills in her sweaty palm. At the rag-man shivering on the street corner, deprived even of the wall he once had to lean against.

She bites her lip and closes her eyes. Suddenly it seems as if the pounding in her head is the beat of drums.

* * *

"Maureen, I want you to be serious about us. For once." Joanne sits back on her neatly groomed couch and crosses her legs. Maureen is going through the refrigerator, complaining that none of the food is exotic enough to feed her passion.

"What, Pookie?" Maureen bumps her head on the door and makes a noise resembling a squeak.

"You. I want you to be serious."

"You want me?"

"_Maureen_!" Joanne has the sudden urge to throw her out of the apartment once again.

* * *

Mark lurches to his feet at the sound of the phone ringing. He is drained, very nearly falls over at the effort of getting up. It is dark outside, but that's the only indication of how much time has passed.

"Mark?" The voice crackles in and out, nearly lost in some unidentified background noise.

"Roger? Where are you, I can't hear!" Mark wraps the phone cord around and around his arm, not caring when it starts to hurt.

"I'm…actually I don't know. But um…I just wanted to tell you…I'm coming home."

"Rog, that's great!" Mark notices that the cord is about to come out of the wall, and stops twisting.

"Only…there's something I've got to do first."

Mark stares at his camera lying forgotten on the couch. Thinks of all the clips he has just watched. The magic they've held over him.

"Yeah," he says absently. "Yeah, I think I know what you mean."

* * *

"Give to those in need! Help the homeless!" The racket continues.

Mimi springs to her feet before her eyes even have a chance to clear, her mind made up. There is more energy in her step than there has been in weeks.

Slowly, deliberately, she crosses the street and stops in front of the Salvation Army Santa, money still in hand. Carefully she leans over and spits on his sign.

The rag-man applauds.

"Help the homeless," says Mimi coolly to the Santa. She walks over to the rag-man and places the crumpled bills in his outstretched palm.

* * *

"Joanne, what's wrong with you? It's a holiday! Let's celebrate!" Maureen bounds onto the sofa and nearly bounces back off.

"I just…look, Maureen, things aren't going to work like this. I can't do this!"

"Do what? Celebrate?" Maureen tugs on her sleeve. "Kiss?"

Joanne sighs. Stares at the goddess grinning back at her. "Are you going to stick around this time?" she asks at last.

Maureen giggles. "Are we going to celebrate?"

Joanne sighs, and kisses her. She is nearly certain Maureen will leave again. Things like this just don't last. They will fall apart again eventually. But today is Thanksgiving, and it most certainly won't be today.

* * *

Catapulting back into the car, Roger shakes the water from his hair like a very large dog. It splatters the mirror, creating tears on his reflections face. He stares at it for a while, tries to recapture the moment from before.

Then he picks up his guitar.

Shakes the cramps out of weary fingers once more, and begins to play.

For the first time in two years, there is music.

* * *

Lingering outside the McDonald's, on the other side of the glass, Collins at last makes eye contact with the little girl. She smiles radiantly, and there is something eerily familiar about it.

Reaching into his pocket, he pulls out something he has kept there among the pill bottles. A pink paper rose, slightly bent. Collins closes his eyes and lifts it to his nose as if it were a real flower.

"_A bouquet," he hears Angel say. "For my king."_

"_A bouquet? But what do I do with a bouquet?"_

_Angel shrugs. "Brighten up the world."  
_

Opening his eyes, Collins looks at the little girl again. She puts her hands flat up to the glass, and he mirrors her on the other side.

"Happy Thanksgiving," he mouths again, and very slowly puts the rose on the ground.

* * *

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